Rotary internal combustion engines are generally known in the art. In order to operate a rotary combustion engine in an efficient configuration, it is desirable to use each of the volumes defined by an adjacent pair of rotor-mounted pistons as a working volume. It is also necessary to prevent the pistons from rotating in a direction opposite to the direction in which the rotors provide useful power if the engine is to avoid the inefficiencies inherent in reciprocating piston configurations. In order to prevent this counterrotation, prior art approaches (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,010,716-Minka; and 3,203,405-Sabet) have utilized extremely complex elliptical gear arrangements. Other prior art approaches (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,990,405-Kecik and 1,641,911-Tschudi) have used equally cumbersome mechanically operated clutch mechanisms. The prior art (e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,990,405-Kecik; No. 3,854,457-Taurozzi; No. 1,641,911-Tschudi; and No. 1,273,380-Kuhn) is also characterized by use of a toroidal operating chamber of circular cross section. In addition to the other problems present in the prior art, these configurations require the rotors to be assembled within extremely tight tolerances since the pistons and carrying walls must be a single rigid unit. This is a significant obstacle to economical construction of such devices. Another problem exhibited by the prior art is the limitation imposed by having the intake, ignition, and exhaust means mounted in a fixed housing. This feature requires the timing of the engine to be a function of the position of the rotors with respect to the housing, rather than with respect to one another. The intricate clutch control and timing requirements are the reason that elliptical gear means or intricate clutch means are necessary in order for these engines to function. As a result, none of the prior art engines has proved practical. One exception may be the Wankel engine (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,988,065), which has achieved limited acceptance. However, the Wankel engine presents a completely different approach to the desired end from that presented by the present invention. In addition, the present invention is of much simpler design than the Wankel engine.
One of the principal advantages of the present invention, which distinguishes it from the prior art, is that the timing of the engine is a function of the position of a pair of rotors with respect to one another, independent of their position with respect to the housing. In addition, the intake, ignition, and exhaust means rotate with the work chambers defined between adjacent pistons carried by the rotors. As a result of these innovations, the pistons are free to run in the chamber without any gears or levers coupling the pistons to one another, to the drive shaft, or to a clutch mechanism. Power is extracted and flyback is prevented through the use of self-activating one way clutch mechanisms between each rotor and the drive shaft and between each rotor and the housing. As a result, the only gears which are necessary are for the starting function. Therefore, the present invention presents a simple modular design which possesses far greater flexibility than any of the prior art. While the use of one-way clutches is known in the art (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,641,911-Tschudi and 1,273,380-Kuhn), it is the unique combination of the use of one way clutches both for flyback supression (e.g., between the rotors and the housing in one preferred embodiment) and for power extraction (e.g., between the rotors and the drive shaft in the same preferred embodiment), combined with the rotating intake, ignition and exhaust means, which permits the pistons in the present invention to run free of any gearing or mechanically triggered clutch mechanisms necessary to perform these functions in the prior art.